The queue curves around the corner like a frozen riot. People are standing chin-to-back, stomach-to-buttocks. Shoving. And desperate. What would have been ZANU propaganda from heaven if it were a queue at a polling station just weeks ago is today a sad sign of the times. They are queuing for sugar. A rare sweet thing in life. Because all politics means to the people of Harare is beatings, blood and broken hopes.
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A bus broke down today. Like everything else here. It halted and froze, blocking both lanes of traffic as cars at the robots waited for it to revive itself. It spluttered back to life then died then spluttered again and edged forward. After a while it began to trundle along down the road until the next break down. Like our economy. It was an enjoyable joke though. It was a Newsnet bus carrying all the staff that work at our lies-ridden Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. Sometimes the propaganda fails to cover the pothole.
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Things fall apart. Fast. Inflation changes its' face every day. Basics become luxuries. A small packet of Zimbabwean cheese is thirty US dollars. Local beer in a bar goes for seven US dollars. Meat goes for no less than five. The ZimSwitch system, which facilitates payment with bank cards, is crumbling. It doesn't understand trillions. Like the rest of us. So our lives are in limbo once again. Parallel lives in a parallel economy. As we wait for the AU and UN to intervene and put in place a transitional government. So that we can have free and fair elections and begin laying the foundations for the New Zimbabwe. International solidarity has never been as important as it is now. We wait for it. Standing in sugar queues, bank queues, bread queues. We wait.
